Many homeschoolers struggle to teach writing in the home. It seems so subjective! This meaty, comprehensive program was written by a dedicated teacher to address lagging writing scores in Florida. Her students had impressive gains in the scores after using the pilot version of the current program. What led to their success?

Designed to teach expository and narrative writing, the step-by-step techniques in this book can help your child write focused, organized, and detailed essays. Each grade lists mastery skills and gives concrete instruction in pre-planning writing. A webbing system is used to encourage the students to write more detailed compositions. The web is color coded to help students to follow the system.

For straight narrative writing, a BMMME graphic organizer is used, which stands for beginning, middle, middle, middle and ending. The program is for use in grades K - 5 and these organizers are used consistently through each grade level.

Each grade level contains many more helps, such as grade appropriate prompt topics, web samples, strengths and weaknesses sheet for the younger grades, and rubric scoring checklists for the older grades.

Some of the material is specifically geared for the classroom, such as sample parent letters for at-home writing projects, but, overall, the material is well suited to the homeschool setting.

I love to write and love to encourage my children to write, but it is enormously helpful to have a comprehensive resource to guide and track my instruction. I reviewed Volume One of this program and have learned that Volume Two is also available, which includes daily lessons, warm ups, grammar skills, student handouts, and more. Sounds interesting! Call or visit the website for current pricing.



-- Product Review by: Christine Field, Senior Correspondent, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine